Through our understanding of how plants secure their own nutritional requirements, we can provide new solutions for sustainable food production for the world’s growing population.

Plants must secure high levels of nitrogen, and in conventional agriculture nitrogen is added at high concentrations in the form of inorganic fertilisers. Artificial nitrogenous fertilisers can increase yield by as much as 50% and the global farming system, and hence our own food supply, is now dependent on them. We would face very severe food shortages if nitrogen fertilisers were to become unavailable.

However, their use comes with high economic and environmental costs. Farmers, especially in developing countries, spend a high proportion of their income on fertilisers that account for a significant proportion, sometimes the majority, of the costs of crop production. Fertiliser synthesis and application leads to high amounts of nitrous pollution in aquatic systems causing algal blooms and dead zones in shallow seas as well as nitrous pollution of the atmosphere causing poor air quality and significant greenhouse gas emissions.

But we cannot stop using fertilisers and meet a food security agenda; nor can we afford to keep using them and meet an environmental sustainability agenda.

Producing nitrogenous fertilisers requires lots of energy that currently comes from the burning of fossil fuels. It is anticipated that by 2050 2% of global energy will be used in fertiliser production [ref 1]; this represents the single largest energy input into intensive agriculture. This is unsustainable, and if the price of oil increases, so does the price of fertilisers, and so our food. Add to this the environmental costs of these fertilisers and it is clear that we need to find another way. I believe the answer lies in plants themselves – finding a biological and sustainable means of fertilising plants.

My research looks at leguminous plants, such as peas and beans. On the roots of these plants are small growths called nodules which are factories that supply all of the nitrogen the plant needs. Within the nodules are specialised bacteria that form a mutually beneficial relationship with the plant. The bacteria take nitrogen from the air and covert it into a form that the plant can use. In exchange the bacteria are supplied with sugars produced by the plant. It’s a beautiful and elegant system, and I’m interested in understanding the fundamental science behind this association.

This interaction involves signals between the bacteria and the plant. The signals trigger the plant to produce nodules to house the bacteria and also control the exchange of nutrients. Getting a complete understanding of the process will take a long time, but the driving force behind it is that if we can get a better understanding of the process we can look to transfer it into non-leguminous crops like wheat, rice or maize, the world’s three most cultivated crops. This would slash the amount of oil needed to grow them, and the amount of pollution caused by the fertilisers they currently need. However, transferring this process can only occur with the use of genetic modification (GM).

I see GM as a natural and biological solution to this huge problem. However, I know many people have a negative perception of GM. In this case I think the benefits are clear.

We are working very carefully and thoroughly to understand the process [ref 2,3], and then to predictably and safely transfer nitrogen fixation to crops. We know the effects of nitrogen fertiliser pollution on the environment, and we know the effect that burning huge amounts of fossil fuels has on our climate. But we do this anyway out of necessity to support current food supplies.

Balancing these very detrimental impacts against the perceived dangers of GM will, in my opinion, be the key to delivering the second, greener revolution in farming that we need to secure our food supply now and into the future.

References

Is it possible to increase the sustainability of arable and ruminant agriculture by reducing inputs?

Nodulation Signaling in Legumes Requires NSP2, a Member of the GRAS Family of Transcriptional Regulators

About Dr Giles Oldroyd

Dr Giles Oldroyd leads the Plant Perception and Response to the Environment Programme at the John Innes Centre. He received a David Phillips Fellowship from the BBSRC and has received a number of awards for his research, including European Molecular Biology Organisation young investigator, European Research Council young investigator, Society of Experimental Biology President’s medal and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award.

5 comments to 'Getting to the root of food security'

Cassandra8 March, 2010

I agree wholeheartedly with the use of all available technologies to ensure sufficient food, and this is an excellent idea. (I can’t help but wonder if the same concerns about selective breeding rang around the marketplaces of Mesopotamia when cereals, fruits and vegetables were first cultivated from the wild…)

Regardless, the real battle is surely not with the small farmers or their local communities, but with the governments and voters (and conflicting interests) in the countries whose researchers perfect such technologies.

To do this would seem to require convincing people that such progress is not simply an extension into agriculture by a hated corporate hegemony (perhaps by keeping the research at public labs and away from private companies, somehow), that the GM crops won’t damage the ecosystem or our bodies (however unlikely both may seem to those in the ivory towers of research), and to slay the idea that genetic research is somehow “playing god”, and is unpalatable for that gut reaction alone.

The first is very hard to achieve because of the ties between government, business and funding. The second is very hard to prove due to the size and complexity of the systems. The third is nigh on impossible to achieve as feelings and beliefs seem not to respond to logic, coercion and certainly not by recourse to “the greater good”.

GM crops altered to fix nitrogen will be produced, now it’s possible to do so. They do have the potential to increase yields in a post-oil world. But to see them accepted and introduced widely, and making a real difference to the global population, is a far far trickier thing to achieve than simply splicing genes.

Its very true that nitrogen fertilizers enable farmers to achieve high yields that drive modern agriculture. The use of nitrogen fertilizer will continue to increase substantially as global population and food requirements grows.
While fertilizers are effective in driving crop yield improvements but they also have a negative impact on the environment. Most plants are able to utilize less than one-half of the nitrogen fertilizer applied by growers, much of the remaining nitrogen fertilizer leaches into the air, soil and water and causes pollution.

Regards
Amrita

Lee15 October, 2010

Hi,

Interesting article indeed. I personally think that, given the circumstances, if people were made more aware of the benefits that GM can bring then they wouldn’t be quite so negative – it’s clear there are many benefits that would substantially impact the environment in a positive way.

I agree this seems like a good step to reduce the amount of pollution that the current nitrogen fertilizers produce. What needs to be done though is making the public aware, not only of the benefits that GM can bring to the environment – but the problems that exist with pollution within current crop production.

Regards,
Lee

R Hood1 November, 2010

Benefits……….GM?
You means there are some other than the vast profits made by the MNCs?

marlon wolff10 November, 2010

there was a news insert with the financial times on 14th October wholly dedicated to the subject of food security [Admin: Link removed as webpage/file no longer exists]